Gary Sweeten

What is breaking around us is not only a political crisis or a social crisis. It is a crisis of the image. When people speak of one another with contempt, when whole categories of human beings are made disposable in our rhetoric, when cruelty becomes a virtue and tenderness a vice, the image of God is being defaced in those who speak so. The Christian witness is not first about who is right in the argument. It is about refusing to participate in the defacement, and about offering, in Christ, the only path by which the likeness can be restored.

Here's the religious composition of Democrats in 1972: Protestant: 59% Catholic: 31% Non-Religious: 4% Something Else: 6.5% In 2024: Protestant: 36% (-23 pts) Catholic: 20% (-11 pts) Non-Religious: 32% (+28 pts) Something Else: 12% (+6 pts)

Once you hit about a 20-point IQ gap, communication starts to completely break down. It's not that the lower IQ person is "stupid" (although that can often be the case) or the higher one is arrogant, it's that you're literally operating on different systems. A 20 point difference (roughly 1.3 standard deviations) means: Vocabulary and abstraction levels diverge sharply. What feels like crystal clear logic to one side sounds like vague, pretentious word salad to the other. Jokes land flat. Metaphors get taken literally. Complex cause and effect chains get simplified into "this good, that bad." Different time horizons and pattern recognition. One person thinks in months or years and sees systems, the other is locked into days or immediate rewards. Trying to explain second order effects feels like speaking another language. Also, processing speed and working memory gaps. The higher IQ person is already three steps ahead, getting impatient. The lower IQ person feels talked down to or overwhelmed. Both walk away frustrated. Both have wasted each others time.

The Sacred Cow of "the pastor" and "the sermon" is such nonsense. Wholly absent from the bible, yet it forms the center point (in place of Christ) of nearly all protestant churchianity.

PURE EVIL: Unhinged leftist, after learning that Tulsi Gabbard’s husband is battling cancer, wished him a painful death and said they hope Tulsi “follows him right after.”

This abortionist QUIT when she read a Bible verse! When Dr. Beverly McMillan allowed herself to speak Christ’s name, something changed inside of her. An abortionist in Mississippi at the time, McMillan said her life had been troubling her deeply and she began reading a book that encouraged her to repeat the Bible verse, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Sitting in her car one day, she finally said the verse to herself and immediately felt the “presence of Jesus Christ.” In 1975, she said the abortion facility Family Health Services in Jackson, Mississippi, asked her to begin doing abortions for them, so she did. She aborted at least 500 babies while she worked there. But she was not happy with her life. McMillan said she felt miserable and began having suicidal thoughts; so she bought a book called “The Power of Positive Thinking.” In the first chapter, she said the author recommended that readers repeat the Bible verse “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” ten times every day. But McMillan resisted. Then in early 1976, on a cold, rainy day, she “finally just gave up and said, ‘Okay I’ll say that darn thing.’” That was the moment when God began changing her life. “I was in my car in the doctors’ parking lot at Baptist Hospital when I finally gave up and just said, ‘Okay I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ At that point, I had a remarkable experience. The presence of Jesus Christ in the back seat of the car behind my right shoulder like the hound of Heaven jumping out of the underbrush,” she said. McMillan went back to the abortion facility, but the abortion of a 12-week unborn baby boy soon afterward prompted her to quit. “It was a little boy, you could easily tell that,” she remembered. “Off by itself was this little arm with this perfectly formed bicep muscle. And I had this cha-ching moment. “My youngest son was, I guess, about 3 years old at the time and he was trying so hard to keep up with his big brothers. And he would go around saying, ‘Look at my muscle! Look at my muscle! I’m strong enough!’ And something connected and just this wave of sadness came over me and I just thought, you know, ‘What am I doing?” she continued. McMillan began going to church with her children and quit her job at the abortion facility. Since then, McMillan has been active in the pro-life movement. Along with sharing her personal testimony, she also offers a message of encouragement and mercy to post-abortive women and abortion workers. “Abortion is not the unforgiveable sin and I know that,” she said. “I regret what I did but I’m at peace with God’s forgiveness and he’s given me the grace to forgive myself. I would just say, ‘Believe that.’ Jesus said himself, he didn’t come for the righteous. He came for us.”

In 2005, I wrote about 'Discipleship Pathways'. I unpacked how to develop ordinary Christians around tables, outside church walls, without Clergy, into the actual neighborhood, being the presence of Christ, while each learns to disciple others as they are discipled.

How does this not make people at least begin to question if this is all based on man-made rules? At some point this just reads like fear of women.

The term 'Black excellence' gets thrown around a lot for athletes, actors and singers, but rarely where it should. This man was a voice we needed to pay attention to decades ago. He was sound, and his messages were rooted in common sense and concern for Black people. He didn’t yell, he didn’t scream, and he didn’t use ad hominem attacks to win arguments. He just started talking, and your walls would come down, and the scales fell from your eyes, making it easier to see what needed to be done for us to elevate. In your passing, I pray more people discover who you were and your message. Thank you for trying and caring enough to tell us the truth. Rest well, Robert L. Woodson Sr.

Not every kind of self-watching is healthy. There is a counterfeit attention that becomes scrupulosity, an exhausting hyper-vigilance about every motive and every thought, until the soul is so busy auditing itself that it cannot rest in God’s love. There is another counterfeit that becomes pure self-absorption, a long mirror gaze that has nothing to do with prayer. Real attention is always relational. It is the soul standing before its Maker, not the soul standing in front of itself. If your watchfulness leaves you anxious and exhausted, you have wandered into a counterfeit. The genuine article makes you freer, not tighter.